Discord Redesign Project
Role:
UX Researcher / UX Designer
caSE stUDY:
Situation: Discord is widely popular communication platform used primary for study groups, hobbyists and gaming communities, however many users within these active communities tend to “lurk” commonly referred as someone who's actively on these communities taking information without actively engaging within the community.
Task: The end goal of this project is to evaluate discords interface design to determine how design principles such as visual hierarchy and choice overload influence a user’s behaviour in aspects contributing to lurking.
Action: Conducting a mixed research data collection method approach was the ideal steps to take. Recruiting young adults in their 20s to partake in questionnaires and the think aloud sessions whilst completing basic tasks within discord and communities all to gain data to understand why users are lurking based on design.
Result: The finding suggested that while Discord is considered by the participants easy to use large community servers with long channel lists and densely packed information discouraged active engagement.
oRIGINAL dESIGN
Data collection methods used
For collecting the data within this project, a mixed-method approach was implemented. The first method used for collecting the data was a questionnaire to gain quantitative data, and the second method used to collect data was a think-aloud session, which was used for gaining qualitative insights into why users are lurking.
ETHICS
To ensure that all the data collected was ethical and appropriate to use for this project, an ethics form was created and presented to each user to ensure they understood any legal reuqirements and undertsand how their data will be used and whn conducting online think-aloud sessions users would have to agree to particpating before starting therefore ensure further that we can ethically and legally use the data for the purpose it was intended for
user Participants
The participants were gathered through gaming, and for this research, all Discord users who volunteered were over 18 years old and were then recruited to particpate within the study
Key Findings
The research found that Discord’s interface is easy to use, with participants responding positively to its familiar three-panel layout. This structure supports efficient navigation and should be retained in any redesign. Visual customisation features, such as themes and colour options, also contributed positively to the user experience. However, usability issues emerged in larger servers. As channel lists expand, the interface becomes increasingly cluttered, making it more difficult for users to locate relevant information. Furthermore, participants reported feeling overwhelmed by dense layouts, indicating increased cognitive load during navigation.
A key issue was weak visual hierarchy, with limited distinction between categories, channels, and controls. This reduced clarity and made certain features less discoverable, particularly for less active users.
Overall, while the core layout is effective, improvements are needed to reduce clutter, strengthen hierarchy, and support clearer navigation.
